The usual mix this week of my stuff, old and new, poems from my library, including poet friends, and, though I rarely mention them, my photos, which in my mind, have become as important to "Here and Now" as the poetry.

And speaking of poetry, I was very disappointed when I visited my usual half-price book store and discovered that, in the course of remodeling, they reduced their poetry section from two bookcases to four shelves in one bookcase. This is a chain of half-priced books. I'm anxious to visit the other stores in the city to see if the reduction in poetry is also reflected in their other stores.

It's important to me for a number of reasons, one being that almost 100 percent of the poems I use in "Here and Now" come from used books I buy at secondhand book stores, primarily from this chain.

A long overdue poem, a confession written and held, thinking I have failed in the past to write the poem I want to write and here again, that maybe if i just hold it I can make it better.

I didn't, but here she is anyway, a mother and proud grandmother.

Mother's Day...

I have come to understand,

over the 20 years since her death,

that my mother was a saint...

the wound of her loss

grown through each of those years,

the regrets,

my failure to understand

the most important

things...

I've never written a proper poem

for her

and I won't today

too much honesty is

required

Two poems by my poet friend, David Eberhardt.

Dreams
My body stands between me and me
In dreams - I'd rather they ended - the loss in them -
The moosh of storytelling - where DID I park my car?
And yet not to worry - I never arrived in a car to begin with!
The table I'm assembling underwater? Interrupted ineluctably -
The body's imperative that is I HAVE GOT TO PEE!!
All I have to do is wake up and
And I've no longer lost my keys....,
Tomorrow in daylight it all scatters -
"Midnight on Bald Mountain" - Mussorgsky's original version -
As a pink coda of dawn appears in the music;
The ogres of confusion shrink to puddles.
Plus my lover saves me from the evil night:
I move closer to the still center
of my wife - my CLEAR WATER!
The one dream that comes true - the only one that matters!

Tribute to Stephen Hawking & Rene Descartes ("I think therefore I am")
The gold fish in a fishbowl
Being carried by a small girl

In a market, their different

Perspectives, laws of nature, reality in ...
Quarks as if bound by rubber?
13.7 billion year history?
Is your "best fit model"
Mind of the beholder,
Between your ears,
What you choose it to be.

From 2007, another coffeehouse observational.

dream weaver
the boy
in the yellow
shirt
with dark
Latin
eyes
looks for the girl
in the yellow
dress
with broad
shoulders
and hair
black
and flowing

he dreamed
of her last night
and knows
she
will soon dream
of him

The allure of smart-ass cats. From 2007.

what can we do, they're smarter than we are
there are 600
million
housecats in the
world
spread
from pole to pole
from all the way
east
to all the way
west
and they all
descend
from one of five
female
wildcats who
in the barely
historical
mid-east
noticed
that filthy-
living human-kind
were vermin
magnets
and that living
off the vermin
who lived
wherever
humans lived
was a helluva
a lot easier
than trying
to chase down
prey
in the wild
and
thus did
the cat
domesticate
itself
on its own
terms
&
conditions
and thus
did little
puss
and
boots
assume her
smart-as
air of feline
superiority
and
if you know
the whole story
it's hard
to argue
with them

Just a reminder for anyone who was surprised by the climate accord action.

stupid Pig

Pig

puts a gun to our head

and pulls the

trigger

some people love him

for it

stupid Pig

stupid people who love him

for it

Back to Pablo Neruda, from The Book of Questions, a bilingual book originally published in 1974, my edition published with translation by William O'Daly by Copper Canyon Press in 1991.

XXXVIII
Do you not believe that death lives
inside a cherry's sun?

Cannot a kiss of spring
also kill you?

Do you believe that ahead of you
grief carries the flag of your destiny?

And in the skull do you not discover
your ancestry condemned to bone?

XXXIX
Do you not sense danger
in the sea's laughter?

Do you not see a threat
in the bloody silk of the poppy?

Do you not see that the apple tree flowers
only to die in the apple?

Do you not weep surrounded by laughter
with bottles of oblivion?

XL
To whom does the ragged condor
report after its mission?

What do they call the sadness
of a solitary sheep?

And what happens to the dovecote
in the doves learn to sing?

If the flies make honey
will they offend the bees?

LXI

How long does a rhinoceros last
after he's moved to compassion

What's new for the leaves
of recent spring?

What did the tree learn from the earth
to be able to talk with the sky?

It never made any sense to me. Another from 2007.

interesting company
I know people
who believe that if
Saddam
had just whispered the
three
little words,
"Jesus,
same me"
as the noose
tightened
on his neck
he could have
spent eternity
strolling
in heavenly fields,
amidst all the popes
and preachers
and holy roller
derby servants
of the son...

too
bad, he didn't

and Gandhi, too,
such a simple thing,
three
words
spoken quickly
as the bullets
pierced his flesh
and he could have been
in the clover forever
and ever and even
evermore

but he didn't
either
and it's too late now,
for both, so
Saddam
and Gandhi,
brothers
of the eternal fire,
are ever roasting
in hell, right now,
even as we speak...

now this doesn't
make any sense to me
but who am I to question
such holy folk
as claim it to be true
and,
anyway
there is an upside
to the whole affair:

at least
I can count
on interesting
company
when the time
of my roasting
comes

This poem by Nikki Giovanni, is from her book Bicycles (Love Poems), a Harper Perennial published in 2009.

First Chair
They say I'm too jazzy
For First Chair

I bring something different
And maybe something nice

But the orchestra is Baroque
And I am Gospel

It is Beethoven
And I'm Rhythm and Blues

It's piano
And I'm honking sax

My problem is
I make my own muffins
Ice cream
And music

Not always the best
But all ways my best

I look good
And I dress well

I definitely have
Stage presence

I want to play
I want to play
I want to play

Rain is an event around here. A rainy couple of weeks, wonderful.

a brief rain (and all around welcomes)

brief rain,

the concrete plaza

shines wet,

mirrors the cloud-broken

sky, the small, spring-green

tree, protected, not jet fully exposed

to the new summer's heat

95 degrees

projected for the day,

all life around

welcomes the temporary, passing

relief of even small storms

hopes

for more,

small or large,

through the day's

progression

Originally written in 1969, from the time I spent on Pakistan's Northwest Frontier, reworked in 2007.

Basically stuck behind our own walls due to political unrest, I had to imagine a lot from what I see over the walls and from the local people who worked on our outpost on the edge of the desert.

whispers
shepherds
graze their sheep
in the afternoon sun
as men in the village
rest
in the shade
of a large banyan tree,
the murmur of their voices
drifting through the silence
of the dusty street, whispers
on weak desert breeze

Sexy stuff from 2007.

flashing
watch her walk

with each step
the rear of her foot rises
as weight shifts from her heel to her toes
while her shoe lags behind
and between the shoe
and the bottom of her foot
the soft pale flesh
of her instep flashes
like a lover's wink
across a crowded room,
this most beautiful, unseen place,
inviting a caress,
a kiss
flashing like a secret
across a crowded room

Next, a short piece by my poet friend Ellen Kombiyil. The poem is taken from her book, Histories of the Future Perfect, published in 2015 by The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective.

Ellen is one of my most favorite poets.

Primal Kissvariation on a theme by Marvin Bell
Of the heart on might say that it slows.
The swan's neck unlooses its S
as it does in flight or when caught
on the butcher's block, made to outstretch,
one eye turned to the man wielding the knife
one eye turned to the wood and not blinking.
Fathers look more gray than white in this light
where there will be no more seeing.
For now, the newly blind must compensate.
There's the whoosh of the knife,
a somewhat wild sensation as slice
blooms a carnation. Dank and smell of lake
recalls what swooping tastes like. Look, love is
lava spilling out & cooling into rock.

In fact, I like Ellen so much I decided to do a second poem.

Wave Oscillation as Time Loop
catching a wave or having it
pull you under saltwater up
the nose knowledge that crabs scamper
sideways can't save you now
you've tumbled over seaweed head
sand down you swimsuit bottoms which
way is out for a moment you find
only sky golden orb that blinds
twirling the way astronauts see
sun flanked by black as it flashes past
spinning before reentry
your breath your eyes your face your mouth
agape no time momentary stuck
the blip it takes for valves to open
and shut you speed to a stop
knees scraped tiny sand grains a lost
beach blanket you in the crowd
taking up a carpet's length of space

A coffeehouse observational

scarlet nails

tall

thin

woman

with long scarlet nails

and shoes that sparkle

like the West Texas

sky at summer-midnight

her hair

combed like women

fix their hair when it's Sunday morning

and they just got out of bed

and don't expect to see

anyone they know

or

at least

anyone they care about

a tattoo,

a cursive statement

of some sort

running up the inside of her

forearm, and another tattoo

I notice under a very expensive-looking

ring on the third finger

of her left hand

there is a story here,

a routine story I think at first

of an every-day woman

having solitary breakfast at a coffeehouse.

but it's the ring and the tattoo

under it that changes

the story,

adds interest and mystery to it

she's in her mid-thirties,

my guess,

a single woman I'm thinking,

square-jawed,

facing the world as she makes it

with a tattoo

on her right arm

and on her left hand

an expensive-looking ring

barely concealing, if that was the plan

a small tattoo

and scarlet nails

red

as the twilight sun

falling over the

Chihuahua Desert

red...

This short poem is by Sunil Freeman, from his book That Would Explain the Violinist. The book was published by Gut Punch Press in 1993.

Mescaline, 1971
The senses are primed go jitterbug
with the things of the senses so I turn

off the lights, crawl into bed,
burrow under a quilt, bring my knees up,
fetal, and close my eyes.

Time forgets to spin itself out.
Nothing but colors and sounds

and something important, maybe my soul,
flowing in and out of a toot
(three left of the left incisor)
like solar flares.

Sounds and dot patterns spin fugues
that shoot form the center of that tooth,
then zoom back into my mouth.

fresco on the other side of sunset
a ridge of low
clouds
pink
as cotton candy
against billows
of virgin white

above the
clouds, a
Mediterranean
sky

Next, I have a selection from the title poem to the book Giraffe on Fire by Juan Felipe Herrera. The book was published in 2001 by University of Arizona Press.

I love this book, though I don't understand much of it. Luckily, understanding is not required to enjoy the intense flow of words and images.

from Giraffe on Fire3
Hold up the right corner of the sea, pleated. Lift it and find pleasure
snoring, cu open by crystal and stone. Look down at your shadow by the
sands, by the gilded whiteness of your legs.

Below you:
a wrapped hydrogen scarf, an ink cactus stuck to the dry galaxy below the
sky veils. Touch down. Come to the ground, the talc, this desert - peeled
and washed by distant clouds. My hair reddish down to my jaws. When will
I blow the conch shell? Shall I awaken the sleeper below? Who is he
following with eyes closed? The perfume is solar. My nakedness is
simplistic. As the sleeper searches, I find America rising on his back,
mottled, brownish. Above the water, the stone folds, clutches itself, peeks
through holes and rivets. We are playing. All of us, then just one. The sand
has been swept with a wide brush. The girl - pensive as she lifts the folds of
the water. One hand. One arm and on the other the conch shell waits.
Poised.

I know the stone is the secret. The secret in the shut mouth When I was
five I cut my finger. I cut off my thumb. I delivered ice on the back. Wolves
sang from the mountains. Julian, the violin man next to us, in the Mexican
village paced his floor. Julian knew his wife, Jesus, was shaking and another
man was raising her hair.

talent
I can see
workers
in the loft
across the street
remodeling
for a new owner

I've heard
it's for that
actor guy,
the one
who had some
success
on TV
then decided
he was god's
gift
to the movies
only to discover
after a string of
really bad movies
that he heard wrong,
that he was really
god's gift to TV
so he's back now
in a third-rate
series
that's a rip-off
of a second-rate
series
that's a rip-off
of the series
he thought he
was too good for

I wonder
how it will be
to sit here on the
porch
drinking my coffee
right across the street
from such an all-around
talent
for downward
mobility

A painting at a coffeehouse in 2007, the same coffeehouse as from the poem before this one.

portrait of a girl at night
winter night
walking
chilled
streets

scarf coiled
in woolen layers
over
neck
to chin

face shadowed
in shades

of gray

eyes
wide in

surprise...

fear...

Last from my library this week, this poem by my poet friend, Dan Cuddy, from his book Handprint on the Window. The book was published by Three Conditions Press in 2003.

There's little violence among them
now,
though wars there are,
differing opinions
and blunt blind stupid hate,
but there's no strength to rise,
much less to fight,
these armies chained
by the dead weight of their bones.

The new violence is within,
fears, cancers,
sharp as knives within,
a life being hollowed out
like a pumpkin,
the grotesque faces,
the gapped-toothed grins,
the yawns.

The sit in chairs or lie in beds,
wasting the embers of their eyes
on the dust floating
in the rays of fading light,
or on he chattering light
from the little box
that has replaced private thought,
private dream.

Dream?

How sad
that life becomes
a box without a screen.

A very fine day.

rain

rain,

finally,

yesterday,

a strong storm pushing through the city,

winds whipping trees, breaking

some, uprooting at least one I saw,

rain pounding like being

inside

a waterfall,

thunder, lightning, god,

was it refreshing

to feel the power, some might say,

wrath of the natural forces we live

so comfortably in most

of the time

my dog,

knowing as dogs do,

the truth of it,

doesn't whine but just sticks

close to me, one step

behind, or, cuddled up next to me

on the couch as, with the patio door open

to the elements raging, I watched the

rage...

a light shower this morning

dry

it's been -

so,

raging

or soft and sweet,

the rain is welcome,

near beloved

by some of us who are not

my dog

As usual, everything belongs to who made it. You're welcome to use my stuff, just, if you do, give appropriate credit to "Here and Now" and to me

Also as usual, I am Allen Itz owner and producer of this blog, and a not so diligent seller of books, specifically these and specifically here: